The F-111 Aardvark ‘Whispering Death’: The ‘Pig’ Flew 4,000 Combat Missions With Only 6 Losses

The F-111 Aardvark ‘Whispering Death’: The ‘Pig’ Flew 4,000 Combat Missions With Only 6 Losses

The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark was widely panned as a Pentagon failure—a Robert McNamara-era boondoggle that the U.S. Navy outright rejected and the Air Force accepted only reluctantly. Yet “the Pig” went on to fly more than 4,000 combat missions over Vietnam, bomb Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya in 1986, and outperform the legendary A-10 Warthog during Operation Desert Storm. The Pentagon Called the F-111 a Failure — It Flew 4,000 Vietnam Missions…